Yay!

It's been a good several days... I really wish I could post all the pictures for every time I've thought "I wish I had a picture of that". Most recently we set up Christmas decorations in studio, so now we have our very own tree and garlands and lights, and people have been playing Christmas carols. Just the process of getting ready was great- it was really relaxing to take a time out from school and life to decorate. Rome is starting to get ready too- some of the shops have garlands and lights are strung across some of the streets. Pizza Navona has temporary stands all along it that sell Christmas things and treats, and there was a sign up in studio today for tickets to midnight mass at St. Peter's.
We've had rain for a couple of days, so I went to the Tiber tonight and it was flooded. It's probably 6-8 feet higher than normal, and it's way wider and faster than normal- it even covers the embankments that you can normally walk on along the river. Apparently November is the rainiest month here, so hopefully it will rain a little bit less during the rest of the year, although a big plus for the rain is that when it does we have to move inside for graphics, where we have a chance to stay warm!
I've also been trying to consciously distance myself from work- it's finally been ehough time that people are branching out and doing some other things. On Fridays a group of people go and play soccer; Sunday there's Ultimate Frisbee; Tuesday there's choir, and Wednesday there's a faith formation discussion led by some pretty cool seminarians. For the faith formation tonight we had a group dinner- I'm so stuffed! We had spaghetti carbonera and an amazing salad and bread and fruit with cream cheese and chocolate cookie flake dip. Sooo good! Nothing like faith formation, let me tell you!

Almost there!

So I was realizing today that I have a little more than one week of classes left, so like 7 classes. I also have a trip to Budapest coming up this weekend, which will be major fun. This got me started on what i would like when i get home though... so here goes.
I am looking foward so much to not pasta- I really am relishing fish stew on Christmas eve, and I would love a crabcake. I miss that. And Bergers cookies- they need to be brought back to Rome.
Also missing indian chicken with chickpeas, which I know is a weird thing to miss, but I guess it's complicated enough that I don't know how to make it and I probably don't have the time anyway.
Really missing being able to go outside the front door and see grass. I love grass!
And... a HAIRCUT! My hair is probably the longest it's been in 4 years. I know that's only at my shoulders, but that's pretty drastic for me, and it means that it's long enough that I can see how much the ends need to be trimmed on a regular basis.
I'm a little iffy on swimming- I miss smelling the chlorine and gliding through the water, but it's been so long that i feel like I'm probably inept at swimming! I haven't done anything wit my arms except sketch, and I'm pretty sure that doesn't help swimming. I know there's a pool in Rome, but Nina and I haven't checked it out yet. We haven't really had time and I think it's a bus ride away at least, so that'll still have to wait.

I think that's about all I came up with. I think I'm going to try and go on a run now for the first time in a while, probably towards Circus Maximus and then St. Peters. Fun stuff...

So unmotivated right now

I don't really want to update, but I guess I should... we went to Cinque Terre for Thanksgiving. It was really pretty, but of course I don't have pictures yet. I wish we had done some more of the hiking, but I think I was the only one who wished that, so we didn't. Currently I'm pretty busy on our project, which seems like it snuck up really fast somehow, and I'm leaving next weekend so no work will get done. Ah well... I really should go do something with my life...

I can't believe

That I'm so excited about getting a Sports Illustrated (thanks Mommom!) and that I joined the choir. I figured that even though I know nothing about singing, I do know most of the songs, and the more voices the better. I just had a rehearsal though and these people are nuts- chords, starting notes, transposing notes into music, the whole bit...and I have no idea. I've just along for the ride!

Roma

I haven't said a whole lot about the city I'm living in recently, so here goes. Rome has so far been really warm, except for the last 2 days, which have been like 30 degrees Farenheit, so a little chilly. Taking notes in class today wasn't much fun, and I think graphics tomorrow will be even less. Not looking foward to that. Then, on Thursday, I'm leaving to spend Thanksgiving in Cinque Terre and go hiking- so more outdoors! Aside from the weather, I often randomly think of things I like or don't like about Rome, so I think I'm going to have to list a few...
Things I like:
They have chestnut roasting vendors on the street- and roasted chestnuts are really good. It always makes me think of that one christmas song with chestnuts roasting on an open fire. They also have fresh coconut when it's warmer, and that was good too.

That there's a church on almost every corner- it's fun to duck in and see what all of them look like.

The random musicians. Of course it's annoying when some of them come around and beg, but listening to them play in trams and in piazzas just as you walk around the city is a good time.

Having water fountains for drinking placed around the city.

Things I don't like:
All the beggars. I've never felt more guilty in my life, but I also feel like it's all a scam. Grrr.

Dog poop. It's everywhere. It stinks.

The euro. It makes me want to pull my hair out and go live somewhere ridiculously cheap.

All the fashionable italians... because I am definitely not wearing boots with a nice coat and 5 colors of dye in my hair (and huge sunglasses).

Intense

Is the best way to describe the movie I saw last night- Scarface. It was about an immigrant who rises up to become a cocaine drug lord, but of course the same things that made him successful come back and cause his downfall. Not for the faint of heart, but a well done movie.
Totally unrelated, I really want to go get soccer cleats because the tread of my tennis shoes is a little slick and playing frisbee and soccer in them is kinda subpar. I'm also rationalizing that I can use cleats again if I play interhall football- but shoes in general are pretty expensive here, and the cheapest cleats I've seen here are 40€, which is like 50 US. I'm sure they're really nice, but I think you can get like cheap 20 dollar ones at home, so I'm torn. I think that's going to be my shopping around mission for the day though.

Assisi

And the update from Assisi! It was amazing- one of my favorite towns so far. It was one of those small, quaint little towns that has a castle at the top of the hill and the town popping out of the hill around it. Friday night we got there and had dinner, met each other a little bit, and then headed off to have a reconciliation service in the crypt of the church of San Francesco. The picture on the right is what we saw as we walked up there that night. It was really cool because there was a little bit of mist (we later found out that there's pretty much always a little mist!) and the lights shining on the white and pink stone in the basilica made it look like it was almost floating. The reconciliation service was a great way to start off a retreat, and in front of the simple tomb of St. Francis made it even more of an amazing experience.


We went back the next morning to look more at the basilica and tour the upper levels, and the picture on the left shows the tower rising through the fog. The fog sank a bit later in the day, but just below the town- it never actually disappeared. We spent most of the day touring the town and stopping in the various churches, so we saw the church of Santa Chiara, which had her body and some relics in the basement and in a side chapel was the cross of San Damiano which spoke to St. Francis. It was really nice to be able to go into a church and mostly just be able to wander around and pray on your own time- very different from our field trips! Later in the day we went down to San Damiano, which was far enough down the hill that it was in the fog, and just walked through the cloister and the church. It was very simple and bare, and you could almost picture St. Francis rebuiling it.


The next day we spent mostly on Mount Subiaso- where St. Francis spoke to the birds. It was a little place to escape for them, so we decided to go. This meant a lot of heading up, so basically we spent about an hour and a half walking up. The picture on the right is once we got up there- there were a couple of statues marking where Francis slept and there were a couple of other statues of the brothers, so Josie decided to imitate one of them. When we first got there and saw this statue, it was really cool because if you followed where the statue was looking there was a dove on a branch.





This is just a group picture taking a break on the way up the mountain...












And a pretty picture of a path on the mountain...





This was the sunset on the second night, above San Damiano, and the other picture is my favorite- it's the clouds below the city. Absolutely breathtaking!

A visual update

I know I've been horrible about posting pictures, but I actually have some to post from the Venice and Emiglia-Romano field trip. Most of them are Venice and Verona, which were my two favorites, so don't be surprised that they are the most represented!

This is a villa we visited one day. We were touring with an italian architect named Pier Carlo Bontempi, and he took us around to different buildings he had built in this one town. He talked to us in italian about what he went through learning classicism and building all these buildings- there was one story he told where he said that he went to rebuild a block that had been damaged in WWII, but because of a historical charter he could not build anything that was different than it had been previously. Apparently previously it had been a pretty ugly block, so he actually went and forged a document on 18th century paper, showing a building in that site that was extremely similar to the one he proposed! When he showed the people in the permit office the document, they granted him the permit because his design satisfied the requirement of being historically truthful!
This villa was a different project though- he apparently knew the people and they were employing a different architect who was trying to make a modernized villa, using concrete and stuff. Pier Carlo said it looked pretty ugly, and eventually the wife stepped in and said that it wasn't her dream house, so they fired the architect and hired Pier Carlo instead. The house was absolutely gorgeous- it's right next to the vinyard, and the owners let us tour the house and the grounds, and then gave us the best wine and parmesan cheese and clementines I've ever tasted... mmm.







This picture is the city of Verona along the riverfront from one of the bridges- at night, obviously. It's not the greatest picture, but it should give you an idea of why I loved the city! It's really cute and quaint, and the riverfront is especially gorgeous.




And here are Colleen and I in front of the Villa Rotunda, which was a pretty sweet house built by Palladio. We had to take this picture because freshman year our end of the year project for one of our classes was to build a model of a famous building, and we ended up with this one- and it ended up being horrible! That night I had to stay up and finish not only the model but also my studio project, and I definitely saw sunrise. Not to mention our model was pretty lame! So this just brings back one of those memories that you've learned to laugh at instead of cringe!




This a a picture of I belive San Georgio Maggiore, by Palladio, from across the Grand Canal. I don't know about you, but I definitely pictured something a lot smaller than that as a canal! I was really a huge fan of the mist, althought this picture doesn't show it that well- I love how all the buildings just fade and then pop out of the mist in front of you. The churches by Palladio were also very neat in that regard- they were generally all white, so it looked like a glow in the fog as you approached, and then I thought they were beautiful up close as well.





This is of course the picture that I just had to post- the requisite gondola! You've got to love it. I will give Venice major coolness points for those and the canals. You can see the difference in sizes between the main canal and the side canals!












And lastly, my favorite picture- from the Duomo in Verona:

Plans

Well I am headed out to Assisi this weekend, which I think is about the best weekend to go on a trip that I could have asked for. Our project will be presented to some people who are actually in charge, like I think maybe the mayor, so our section has to have everything ready to go be photocopied by Thursday night to make it all coherent and presentable, which means- a FREE weekend! I need to get caught up and ahead in my work for my other classes though. It didn't help that today our graphics teacher told us all that our homework assignments weren't good and to redo those, in addition to the one we would normally have for the week. I'm also laying plans to go see the forum at the full moon next wednesday with a couple of other arkies, which should be awesome. I think that's it, so I'll peace out for now.

Good day

I am so tired, but in a very good way. I finally got to go out and play ultimate today with some other arkies-Eric, Katie, and Rachel Maricich- and a guy named Steve from Canada. The only thing was, this was one of Rome's rainy days, so it had poured earlier although it wasn't raining when we made the 30 min hike over there. We played 2 on 2 soccer for a while and then played some ultimate- it was like a grand total of 2.5 hours running around in the mud. It was pretty great and I got so dirty! I wish I had a picture, but no one had a camera. I didn't have cleats like everyone else, so I slid so many times and landed on my butt more than once! The project is going pretty well too- I feel like we're right on schedule and we've done some good stuff so far. I'm working with Danielle Potts, and we're coordinating the site and schedules for our whole studio section, so we've put together a board with photos of the site and compiled the plans people have come up with for their specific buildings. It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. I'm not feeling up for class tomorrow, though.
And hooray for beating Tennessee- did I really see #7 on the AP poll?!

What have I been doing with my life?

Well today I went to Ostia Antica on a field trip. The presentation for the first half of the day was really boring, but then we got to walk around and climb over the ruins and onto columns, which was cool. It took me back to my imagination of the secret garden because there were ruined walls with ivy covering them that you could just wander through. Again, don't have the pictures but will post as I get them.
We've also gotten our new project for studio which sounds pretty intense... and of course I the weekend I go to Assisi is when we have an interem review. Go figure! Oh well- I am supposed to be an organizer/ coordinater/ diagram drawer for this part of the project while we are finishing the master plan for the site.
I'm mostly looking foward to getting some sleep tonight, eating some amazing leftovers tomorrow (chicken-corn soup made by Yacintha and chicken parmesan made by me was dinner tonight and it was GOOD), and WATCHING THE TENNESSEE GAME!! I think we're going to try to rig up the webcam watching someone's TV onto a laptop in studio again. GO IRISH!